Rendering test

rajgopal wrote on 5/27/2006, 10:37 PM
After completing my third project, it had a feeling that DVD video quality compared to DV was a bit off. So I tried a few rendering options and here is what I found.

I used a clip of 51 seconds as my test subject. My computer is 2.67 Ghz P4, 1.5Gb RAM with 1.5Gb/sec SATA hard drive.

First, I selected MPEG1 option, it took 1:06 min to render, 11.8Mb file, (no Wide Screen in MPEG 1) and bitrate was 8.130 Mbps. The clip was useless since, there was no WS option.

Second, I selected MPEG1 option and customized it with video quality of 31, 2-pass and 8Mbps max bit rate. It took 2:10 to render, the file size was 38Mb and bit rate was 8.130. No widescreen here either, so the clip was worthless.

Third, I rendered the file as .avi to let DVDA convert to MPEG. The render time was only 25 sec (I did not have any Fx or transitions). The file size was 185 Mb and didn't know about the bit rate.

Fourth, I went with Make movie, Burn DVD option. The render time was 1:00 min with 46Mb file (incl .wav file). Fortunately, there was WS option. But the bit rate was just 5.974 Mbps.

So, here are my conclusions.
1. Render as....MPEG1 option is useless if you have WS clip even though you can customize the video quality. May be it should upgrade to Big brother Vegas 6.0d.
2. Even though .avi file is large, it maintains good bitrate. But, the video quality compared to Burn DVD option #4, was unnoticeable (played DVD on 50" plasma)
3. With VMS, you get what you pay for.

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 5/28/2006, 3:39 AM
Why did you use MPEG1? DVDs are MPEG2, so if you render to MPEG1 then DVD Architect is going to have to re-render the file to MPEG2. When that happens you have MPEG to MPEG encoding and that's just about guaranteed to result in a horrible file.

MPEG2 supports wide screen.
rajgopal wrote on 5/28/2006, 7:19 AM
I tried MPEG so that I can increase bitrate. Bitrate in MPEG2 is a mystery in VMS.
Tim L wrote on 5/28/2006, 8:01 AM
If you send an .AVI file to DVD Architect Studio, you can then manually select the bit rate within DVDAS before you burn the DVD. I don't remember exactly where you find it (and I don't have VMS installed on the computer I'm at right now), but I think you have to select "Advanced" render somewhere, then look around for options. Somewhere in there you can manually specify a bit rate -- as high as 9 or 10, I think, but you probably shouldn't exceed 9? if you want to be able to play on a standard DVD player.

And as Chienworks indicated, don't even bother with MPEG-1, anywhere in your workflow. Render to MPEG-2 from VMS, or render an AVI, send it to DVDAS, and let DVDAS render MPEG-2.

Tim L